Peranakan

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The word "Peranakan" is Malay for someone who is "local born" of mixed ancestry, but it is now almost exclusively used to refer to the Chinese community. Chinese Peranakan communities emerged in Java (and to a lesser extent in southern Sumatra and coastal Kalimantan) during the eighteenth century and functioned as a merchant class under the Dutch authorities. The Chinese settlers, invariably male, married local women, forming a mixed community that then remained apart from indigenous society. While earlier Chinese migrants, starting with the Mongol incursions of the late 1200s, had been absorbed into the local population, the Peranakan communities remained distinct but adopted aspects of Javanese society.

The Peranakan communities adopted the Malay language, mixing in elements of Javanese, Sundanese, and their native Hokkien. Their cuisine was a mixture of Chinese and Javanese cooking, although with elements unknown in either culture, while their traditional clothing was also unique. Traditionally, they preferred the Chinese style of housing. Peranakan culture formed a "third," or "intermediary," culture in the sense that it combined Chinese and Indonesian elements but also included unique customs. What continued to separate the Peranakan—and mark them as Chinese to the indigenous peoples of Java—was their nonconversion to Islam (unlike earlier Chinese settlers); thus they remained Buddhist and/or Confucian or became Christian in some cases. By the early nineteenth century, the arrival of women with a more diverse group of Chinese migrants from Hokkien-, Hakka-, and Cantonese-speaking areas created a new type of settler community, which the Indonesians called Totok (pure blood). The Peranakan communities have tended, over time, to merge with the Totok communities through intermarriage, thus blurring the boundaries.

Cushman, Jennifer, and Wang Gungwu, eds. (1988) Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese since World War II. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Skinner, G. William. (1996) "Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia." In Sojouners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, edited by Anthony Reid. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 51–93.